The state of Indiana has a nice little website called Indiana Unclaimed. Basically, the site is just a front-end to the state’s unclaimed property database. Don’t have any unclaimed money? No problem, you can still make quite a bit utilizing sites like these.

What is unclaimed property?

Essentially, unclaimed property is any sort of asset that the state is currently in possession of, having been unable to locate its rightful owners. Here are a few common examples:

Forgotten savings accounts. ie, you have an account with $23.50 at local bank and then you move away. Oops.

Life insurance benefits. Sometimes the state is unable to locate legal heirs after someone passes away, leaving their life insurance unclaimed.

Cash dividends, unclaimed shares of stock, etc.

How can you capitalize on these oversights? Simple: Start a finders organization.

A what?

A finder is someone who locates unclaimed assets and then attempts to locate their rightful owner. Typically, once the owner is found, the finder charges a percentage of the value of the assets (up to 10% in Indiana), and helps the owners with the reclamation process. In other words, you find $10,000 sitting around, find whoever has the legal rights to it, and help them recover it. You get $1,000, they get $9,000, everybody wins. Right now I’m working on finding the family of a guy who has over $250,000 of unclaimed assets being held by the state. $250k. How does someone lose that much money? It’s ridiculous.

Anyway, I’m trying to hunt him or his family down. There are a number of online services that search public records databases, but they generally have a monthly fee attached, so I’m going to try my luck with other sources first. Wish me luck, because a percentage of that massive sack of cash would be awesome.